I have formulated a near fool-proof plan on how to absolutely overpower and destroy your rivals in the latter part of the game. This would be great for any imperialistic player, especially those that play as the Germans, as their Panzer tank would be the ideal for this. Assuming through out the time you played have received a number of great generals, I recommend settling them all in your capitol city. Also construct the heroic epic in your capitol as well. After a certain point you will want to make a b-line to Fascism. Hopefully, you will receive the free GG, if you were the first to research it. Save the GG and research Military Science, afterwards, make the GG construct a military academy. Also during this process construct the Pentagon, for those extra 4 exp. After Fascism, make a b-line toward Steel. This tech will allow you to construct the ironworks, do so in your capitol. Then make a b-line towards Industrialism. Now its time for a Revolution! Use the civics, Police state, Bureaucracy or Vassalage, and Theocracy. Bureaucracy will allow your capitol to produce faster, but Vassalage will make your units stronger. Now your capitol city will produce a massive number of tanks at 1 wait per turn. I would recommend making about 10 highly experienced tanks for the initial invasion. During the time your capital is producing tanks, pick up tech such as Flight, Artillery, and Radio. Keep on producing those tanks. Also, it is vital that you create a large amount of airports. Have the other cities make around 8 artillery, and 10 bombers (these figures are ideal for the first strike, but if you are in it for global domination, keep producing). Now during this time, your neighbors have been working on lesser military oriented pursuits (hopefully). You have an edge, you have a superior military force, now go forth and conquer. After you invade your first cities, keep flying over more units to relieve and/or reinforce your conquering army. Now you are a volatile juggernaut, attack your strongest foe, and the lesser states will fall in a domino effect under your command.

I always play as the Romans, on Noble, I have used this strategy many times, I developed this on my own, but I am sure others have too. If anyone can critique this formula, please do so.

Heroic Epic+Ironworks is way overkill. A better synergy would be HE+West Point in 1 city, and Ironworks+Red Cross (or something else) in a second city. Also, it's usually accepted opinion around here thats it better to tailor your capitol for a Oxford+Wall Street(?) set-up to push your research. Fascism before Steel is also somewhat silly, it's not a very prioritized tech by the AI, they'll go for the Communism/Physics line far earlier then Rifling/Assembly Line/Fascism.

With 2 very high production cities, (one of which could be coastal in which case Ironworks+Moai would be quite potent) you can push out 2 tanks per turn minimum. 10 tanks for a late war seems far too little, then again it's been awhile since i played Noble. On Emperor if I'm having a late-war I think I don't go in with less then..40-50, backed by 20 bombers and a LOT of Paratroopers for holding the new territory and their unparalleled mobility.

I agree, overkill. I would never build a Military Academy in the same city as the Heroic Epic either. In every other city, army building goes from 100% to 150%, a change of 50%. In the HE city, it goes from 200% to 250%, a change of 25%. This gets even worse if you have IW there too! The only time I would build the Military academy is if I have another city that is very close to 1 unit/turn, and it would push me over, and settling him in the HE city will not result in an additional promotion, and I already have a super medic, and I've already unlocked West point, and there are still a lot of units to be built. So, I rarely build them. AI capitals typically will have both academies and a scotland yard, and a few generals so they make great unit pumps too.

Your strategy might make sense on Marathon, where it's pretty difficult to get more than 1 city to 1 unit/turn, but on normal speed, by the industrial era, most of my cities can do that with US running, or I drafted the army 500 years earlier.

It's good that you're developing strategies on your own, but check out the strategy guides too, as there are years of knowledge in there.

-Zizzeus

Well, I advice you to stop this kind of strategy and try something else. There is a lot of way to steamroll military the AI, and a lot don't need neither ironwork nor heroic epic. ANd fascism before steel is one of the silliest move I can imagine.

1) Since you play with the romans, you dont need to even wait for tanks or need any of this, the best stratergy with the romans is beeline IW straight off the bat and then build tons of Preatorians (after you have hooked up iron), and kill all your neighbours, you will win the game way before tanks. Of course it wont work if you dont have iron but i am willing to bet it would work better than waiting for tanks ...

2) Try not to play with a preset formula, you will do much better if you can react to the given map / leader / situation and base your stratergy on that.

3) Yup definitely HE + IW is overkill.

4) I use the capital as an early military pump but late game its far more useful as a cottaged up Bueracracy capital.

5) Try playing with a few more leaders ...

Try reading through lots of the posts in this forum (S&T) and you will begin to understand most of what we are saying ...

Cheers
Shafi

On the plus side, if you install the unofficial patch to fix the bugs in the official patch, using bureacracy + HE + ironworks + military academy to make units will give you a whole lot of gold from the excess production (since it'll be producing way more hammers than it needs to make a unit in one turn). Anyone want to take a stab at how much gold that would produce? Maybe you could use that + rushbuy in your other cities.

edit: I tried it and only got about 140 gold per turn, less than I expected.

Wow you guys really soned me and eviscerated my thread. Hahahaha

Good! I’ll take your advice into consideration. I didn’t know the production output caps.

Nothing of the sort mate - just a bit of friendly advice, although we can all come on real strong at times ;)

I know, thanks guys, I appreciate the responses. :beer:

I agree, overkill. I would never build a Military Academy in the same city as the Heroic Epic either. In every other city, army building goes from 100% to 150%, a change of 50%. In the HE city, it goes from 200% to 250%, a change of 25%. This gets even worse if you have IW there too!

Military Academy with Heroic Epic can be quite useful. It's not about the percentages, it's about the hammers. If the HE city is producing say 30 base hammers/turn, and your next best city has only 20, then the Mil Academy will create the most military in the HE city. Plus the hammers created by the MA will likely have more promotions since the settled GGs are probably here too.

The HE city usually is the right choice unless it's already strong enough to produce a unit every turn and waste the MA hammers. That doesn't happen as often as everyone thinks, especially on Epic or Marathon speeds. Quite a few apparent "unit every turn!" situations aren't really so - maybe it's a unit in one turn if you have overflow, or during Golden Ages, or a cheap rifleman in one turn but not a tank. And even on Normal speed, it doesn't happen until after power plants and railroads or SP workshops, while the MA is available a fair bit earlier.

Another good use for a Mil Academy is in a coastal city when your HE is inland. The MA works for ships too.

If I have enough GG settled in my HE city to get 3 promotions out of the gate (10xp) with 1 civic (usually Theo) or 4 (CHM 13xp or AGG 10xp), I'll use one for a Military Academy in a tertiary unit building city. The 100% bonus from HE in one city and 100% bonus from Ironworks in the next (assuming a military victory game) is enough. With standard production bonuses (25% from forge/factory 50% from power), the extra 50% isn't enough to use a GG IMO. The tertiary city could always use a boost if a tertiary military city is even necessary. Often, it allows the Ironworks city to have dual-use late Wonderspam/extra units while the MilAcad city continuously builds units along with the HE city.

Usually, by the end-game, if overseas invasion is necessary, I'll mass upgrade Galleons to transports. It's the frigate->destroy upgrades which are really annoyingly expensive. In that case, 2-3 decent coastal cities devoted to building destroyers with a drydock and standard production modifiers can do the trick. I'd rather use a GG for settling in the secondary military cities or even attaching for a second super medic (great for multi-stack attack strats) or an Uber-Tank.

Whether I am swimming in GG's or not, I spread mine out. Because unit upgrading removes any XP beyond 10, I believe it is wasteful to stack too many of them until the Modern Era. If the game isn't over, and you're able to produce non-upgradeable units, then 12 or 17 XP units are very helpful. Before that, I distribute evenly between my unit production centers, until they are cranking 10 XP units at which time I start sending them to additional unit pumps. However, the diminishing GG returns on combat experience usually limits me to 2 cities with settled instructors.

That sounds usual for me as well. 2 cities with settled instructors. However, if you've gone with Free Religion (for diplo reasons or science or whatever) and are not trying to mess with Vassalage in the later game, 1 settled instructor in your additional pumps allows 2 promo units.

The loss of XP isn't a big deal to me if I've got 4 promo units coming out (13XP with CHM, 10XP with AGG) or 5 promotion units (17XP AGG or 20XP CHM). What more do I need?! LoL. Seriously. If I've got Combat 5 Infantry out the door, do I really care if I upgrade them to MechInfantry and lose the XP but keep the 5 promos?! Not really, no not at all.

Just to throw in my $0.02...

I oft like to build HE + Red Cross in a coastal city that has good production (ie very few water tiles and several hills). I find the medic promo on ships to be very, very useful when out of home waters. Of course this is better for continents or archipelago maps.

Why do I prefer it to be HE+RC instead of IW+RC? The additional un-health from the drydock makes IW unattractive.

Also, I like to settle GGs in the same spot, many times in a coastal city as well. I like the 4- and 5- promo units as well, and by the time I get that far, I'm not really thinking about upgrades anymore (since most units, if they are even upgradable at that point, probably only have one more upgrade left in them anyways)

Ok, so I took what you guys said into consideration in my current game. (Noble, Terra, Standard, Temperate, Normal speed). I have been successful in totally occupying all of Spain in the beginning, adopting their state religion of Buddhism. Then I turned the sword to china and vassalized them. Then my neighbor to the right, Babylon was next to capitulate to my regime. After ward I took a b-line to Steel (yes before fascism this time ;) ) Transformed my siege weapons to cannons and upgraded my mace men to riflemen and horseback troops to Cavalry. With this state of the art army, I marched on Byzantium and they surrendered their sovereignty after I cut their nation in half and took their capital. Now all that is left are the Arabs and Sumerians. I’m on my way to getting Industrialism soon, so I believe my tanks will make short work of these hostile nations.

As for the way I tailored my cities, I built the heroic epic with 2 or 3 GGs (I forget) settled in one city, plus a Military academy. In another city, I built the Ironworks, have 2 or 3 GGs (forgot as well) settled there as well, also with a Military academy I plan on building the Red Cross there too once it’s available, plus it has access to the sea. The capitol has Oxford, (in the process of building Wall St.), a Science Academy, as well as 3 GSs and a GM. Also I have Bureaucracy as a civic.

Any input?

Maybe it's time you moved up a difficulty level ;)

Build great wall, fight in your own territory, get tons of great generals.
Romans don't need tanks, they have the uber classical unit to spam and conquer.

Firaxis really botched up over-flow and other issues pretty bad in the last patch. And yet you are advising over-kill in the capital... this does not make sense at all.

There are some paradoxes as well... why are you building stuff like Pentagon, when you are planning to just capture everything in sight anyway? Shouldn't you be spending those hammers on UNITS, and then conquere the Pentagon as soon as a rival completes it?

And Fascism before steel.... woah..!! I'll have to re-evaluate that line....

Firaxis really botched up over-flow and other issues pretty bad in the last patch. And yet you are advising over-kill in the capital... this does not make sense at all.

There are some paradoxes as well... why are you building stuff like Pentagon, when you are planning to just capture everything in sight anyway? Shouldn't you be spending those hammers on UNITS, and then conquere the Pentagon as soon as a rival completes it?

And Fascism before steel.... woah..!! I'll have to re-evaluate that line....

Everything you stated has already been covered, read post 15#.

Thanks.

Maybe it's time you moved up a difficulty level ;)

I'll try my hand at it :D